Book Quarantine in Effect!

I'm not a very organized person at heart, which I guess is very obvious. So I forgot to post my little status last week, and I didn't notice that time was moving on and September was ending. This is despite the fact that there are major birthdays in my family at the end of September, so you think that observing the 30th would be a hint that the next month was almost here.

This matters because I've decided to move my Book Fast from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, so for the last three months I don't request new things, check out impulse books, or buy new books. Or if I do, I hide them until the New Year. So I didn't even notice that my last trip to the library was my last chance to browse! Lucky for me it included a trip to the book sale, though.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading and I'm going to sign up. There's also a version that is kidlit focussed, and as that is a particular interest of mine, I check in with either Teach Mentor Text or UnLeashing Readers for their version.

My pile of books for this week:



Child of Fire, Harry Connolly. I'm rereading the Twenty Palaces  series for my Book Team, and remembering why I like this author so much. His character, Ray, is damaged, intelligent, and brimming with integrity. He might be tempted to steal jewels, but he's very concerned with cruelty and the kind of injustice that leaves burnt smears on playgrounds. The story doesn't shy away from grimness, but I found it a page turner again.

Blood Bound, Patricia Briggs. I also need to reread everything Patricia Briggs has written so I'm reading to meet her when she's GOH at Foolscap. This one looks at her friendship with Stefan, and also develops the low wolf Ben, whose bark is nastier than his bite.

* Game of Cages, Harry Connolly. The second in the series, this one sends Ray out without his boss so that he has to confront the line between right and wrong on his own. How much damage can you deal when you know that defeat means possibly the end of the world? Can you remain human if you must do evil to prevent worse evil? This one gets a horror tag, because there are some horrible things that Ray sees and does.

* Rattle His Bones, Carola Dunn. I'm gobbling up all the extensive collection of Daisy Dalrymple stories my library has to offer. She's a young aristocrat in 1920's Britain who keeps tripping over murders and helping to solve them. The murders are all right, but the fun is the sense of place and the character interactions, especially with the Scotland Yard inspector who falls for her, and his motherless daughter.

* Murder on the Flying Scotsman, Carola Dunn. Another Daisy Dalrymple, where little Belinda runs away to Daisy after a fight with her grandmother, and of course, there's a murder, so her dad shows up right after, rather inclined to blame Daisy for all of it. I spotted the culprit right off, because I'm so clever, but luckily he stayed off page so I could enjoy Belinda, Daisy, Alec, and the others.

The Corsican Caper, Peter Mayle. Reading my Library audio. Rather ho-hum. I find French accents annoying (unlike Italian ones, which are delicious), so the snobbish voices and food names made things drag. The villain was unbelievably stupid, which enabled our dull heroes to defeat him. On the positive side, it was only four disks long!

* The Lion of Rora, Christos Gage, Ruth Fletcher Gage, Jackie Lewis. Cybils YA Graphic Novel finalist. This is a really strong year for this category.

* The Oyster War, Ben Towle. Cybils YA Graphic Novel finalist.  Another find entry, although I might have put it in the younger category. Maybe the deaths and kidnappings pushed it up.

* Nice Dragons Finish Last, Rachel Aaron. I STILL haven't read her first series, although my kids tell me it's great. But this was a fun story with dragons and mages big brothers and cultural differences in a fast moving Detroit story, one that was almost stolen by my oldest son but I saved it so I could finish it.

(* Books I started this week.)

Last week I finished:




Falling in Love, Donna Leon. Reading My Library audio. Delicious Italian accents made me wish the characters would cross the street more often so the narrator would keep saying the names of the crossings. The murder itself was silly, and the police seemed almost naive, but the setting and the characters held my interest.

The Countess Conspiracy, Courtney Milan. The romance was an excuse to write about a female scientist in the Victorian age, along with a family that mostly proves even more loyal than understood (except for the sister, but you can't have everything). It's been so long since I read the other books in this series that I've forgotten most of the details of the other characters (although I remembered the awful dresses) but now I'm reminded that there's one more book and I'll probably enjoy it.

The Flag in Exile, David Weber. I reread this for my book team, which needed a "medal on the cover." Weber reminds me a bit of Orson Scott Card in his earnest desire to have me understand every nuance of his character's emotional state, although I'd prefer to learn this more by their actions than by listening to their internal "As you know, Bob" commentary.

The Winter Garden Mystery, Carola Dunn. Thank you, Team Tapirs, for needing a book with a garden tool on it, because I have adored the Daisy Dalrymple series since I found this book. Number two in the series, this shows off her other impoverished aristocrat friends, as well as the detective who is beginning to find her frighteningly attractive, despite the fact that their different backgrounds make them a completely unsuitable couple. Also, she keeps finding dead bodies.

The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, Carola Dunn. Daisy and the detective go on honeymoon in America. All over America, since he's a pilot. So I guess things work out between them.

Guys Read: The Sports Pages, ed. Jon Scziesca. My team needed a trophy on the cover, so I broke all the rules and read this book explicitly not written for me. I liked the nonfiction stories but backed away from most of the fiction ones.

To Davy Jones Down, Carola Dunn. The start of the honeymoon. I like how I'm skipping merrily around the timeline of these Daisy Dalrymples. This one had lots of fun period information about cruise liners, which fits in well with the Agatha Christie I read that also involved a long cruise.

Styx and Stones, Carola Dunn. Daisy is engaged here, and hanging out with her future stepdaughter Belinda, which is always fun. I really like how authentic the small details feel; of course, I have no way to judge how accurate they actually are.

Die Laughing, Carola Dunn.  Now they've been married for years, and Daisy gets out of going to the dentist by finding him murdered in his office. Whew, what a relief!

This week I started and am still reading a few more books:



Someplace to Be Flying, Charles De Lint.

Requiem For a Mezzo, Carola Dunn.

Summer Garden Murder, Ann Ripley.

Scotsman of My Dreams, Karen Ranney.

Last Summer, Holly Chamberlain.

Bookmarks moved in several books:



The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu. More talking. Not much happens.

Sea Without a Shore, David Drake. Take off! Our heroes are in a spaceship, and about to land and presumably take over a new planet.

City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett. The love interest is being irrational. I don't think he really understands what is going on here.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases. I admit I haven't made much progress with all the Tapir reading I've been doing.




A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott.
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen, Wendelin Van Draanen.
The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca.

2016 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2015: 42 out of 82. About to finish YA Graphic Novels.
2. Reading My Library: I finished Falling in Love and The Corsican Caper and started the next audio. The print books are languishing, though.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 38/51. I am officially way behind! I am supposed to be just about done at the end of this month. I was delighted to find myself reading a Maryland and a Maine book, only to see that I already had them!
4. Full House Challenge:  25/25!
5. Library Challenge: I'm at 181.  Glad to see this one is still moving.
6. Diversity Challenge 2016: 12/12. 11/12. Poetry is the tricky one. In October I'll looking at how man Native Americans appear in my books. So far, none, but then I've been reading a lot of British detective stories.
7. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  41.  Time to make my shelves my BFF. I did buy a new book, but then I read it.
8. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 19/20.  Still need a Pulitzer.
9. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 12/12!
10. Surprise Me Challenge:  I keep almost reading Positively. I've picked picked up the September book. Now I should worry about the October book.
11. Flash Bingo: I still need need a book about books, and an Australian book.
12. Literary Exploration Challenge: 12/12. Now I'll work on the 36 challenge -- 33/36

Dreaded Book Slump

After weeks of casually finishing seven to ten books, I hit a slump. Everything I picked up seemed oppressive, full of unhappy people being miserable and I didn't want to join them. I found books, read until any conflict appeared, and then abandoned them.

Meanwhile I couldn't complete anything in real life either. I wasn't sending emails; I have a 95% installed dryer that blocked my laundry routine, and I couldn't even seem to execute my meal plan (sandwiches for dinner anyone?). Luckily my sister dragged me out for a short hike in the woods, and I came home and actually finished a book. And now I'm listening to the dulcet sounds of clothes tumbling themselves dry, and I've even emailed about half of the people I need to get in touch with. So there is hope.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading and I'm going to sign up. There's also a version that is kidlit focussed, and as that is a particular interest of mine, I check in with either Teach Mentor Text or UnLeashing Readers for their version.

My pile of books for this week:



The Flowers of Adonis, Rosemary Sutcliff.  The hero of Athens dies by treachery, and the glory of Athens will never shine as bright. That's what Sutcliff is all about. Should definitely give this to my classics studying son, who might know some of the history.

* The Proposal, Mary Balogh. This is the first in the Survivor's Club series, and the last one that I read. So the ending was even more certain (not that there is doubt about where a HEA Romance is heading), but I enjoyed seeing two adults work out their relationship. When he shows up proposing marriage and mentioning that it would be handy because he needs someone to escort his sister to a party, she doesn't assume (MISUNDERSTANDING) that is the extent of his feelings, but does suggest a courtship might be better than an engagement since they've barely met. This was a good book to pull me out of my reading slump, because it was engaging but not stressful -- I knew the ending but didn't know the route.

* Project Elfhome, Wen Spencer. I knew I'd like this collection of short stories, because Wen Spencer has a great sense of plot and invents wonderfully vivid characters, but I thought it'd be fairly lightweight. Well, it wasn't soul-searingly intense, but it did a great job of building up the world she writes for her Tinker books, and also gave me a much clearer sense of the different forces acting on that world. The sense of place is rock solid, and the various families are authentic in their differences.

* Farm City, Novella Carpenter. A pure Tapir book. I needed a book that started with the word "Farm." This is the memoir of several years of urban farming in Oakland, when a couple (mostly her) start growing things in the empty lot next door. She adds in first chickens, then turkeys, ducks and geese, and finally rabbits and pigs to her efforts, escalating the work involved and the ooky bodies that she has to dismember. She manages to spend a month eating only what she produces, although she loses a lot of weight doing it, and has a lot of fun when the chef who catches her raiding her dumpster for his pigs offers to help her turn the meat into gourmet food once she slaughters it.

* Books I started this week.

I started and am still reading more books:



Romancing the Duke, Tessa Dare. A Vaginal Fantasy book, although the in-person group I'm in will be discussing a different book, one that I didn't read yet. This one has laugh-out-loud silly moments, but it's got too many pages for its premise, and the sex is also a bit tedious. I've had fun explaining what is going on when my almost-adult son asks me why I'm giggling.

Pegeen, Hilda Van Stockum. I started this to try to cure my book slump, and it worked for a while. But then I saw a tough situation coming (and by tough, I mean a child would feel bad for a few pages) so I ran off to read something else. This was when I knew my slump was serious. I'll get back to it in a few days, I'm sure. Van Stockum doesn't not let her children end the book unhappy.

The Countess Conspiracy, Courtney Milan. The other book for Vaginal Fantasy, although again not the one I'm actually supposed to discuss with actual people. I see a pattern developing here, and perhaps I should read some books on the hazards of social isolation. Anyway, Milan is another trusted author, and this story of a female evolutionary scientist in Victorian times has a lot going for it.

Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits. Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson. Another slump-buster, this one more successful. The short stories of these two beloved authors are short enough to handle, but interesting enough to entertain. But once I got my reading mojo working again, I detoured back to things that I had to read for my book team or my library due date pressure.

The Buried Pyramid, Jane Lindskold. I've joined a new book team, so that my reading obsession can go through the end of the year. They need a book with a mummy in it, so here goes. I'm only in the first chapter, and they are in Egypt, so I'm hoping for some mummy action.

I started and abandoned a few books. They were mainly picks for my Reading My Library, and with my reading slump and imminent due dates looming I snuck off to their respective shelves and found replacements. No titles because I feel the fault was much more mine than theirs.

Bookmarks moved in several books:



The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu. Yay, we have left the boring game, which our viewpoint character didn't even win, and returned to the real world, where he finds someone to talk to.

Sea Without a Shore, David Drake. Time for a brawl in a bar! This is what science fiction is all about.

City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett. I am now reading new material! Unfortunately it's a flashback, so I'm not making forward progress with the plot, but you can't have everything.

Falling in Love, Donna Leon. My Reading My Library audio. The plot is rather scattered, and the police detectives aren't very good at finding things, but who cares because the narrative is willing to go all out with his Italian accent, so I keep hoping they'll cross the street so I can hear the name of the intersection.

Once a Soldier, Mary Jo Putney. Everyone is busily rebuilding things and getting their friends to come and help, particular since the soldiers have vague feelings of foreboding about the bandit situation. I see a battle in our future.

Dark Specter, Michael Dibdin. The annoying first person viewpoint has announced that he's about to fall in love. I only hope that he means with a view, because I really don't want to sit through his emotional washing. Also, I expect more people to die.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases. I admit I haven't made much progress with all the Tapir reading I've been doing.




A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott.
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen, Wendelin Van Draanen.
The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca.

2016 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2015: 40 out of 82. Stalled completely.
2. Reading My Library: I'm enjoing Falling in Love (6/7) and have abandoned When the Devil Doesn't Show.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 38/51. I am officially behind! I need 40 to be on track, 45 by the end of the month.  This week did not help at all.
4. Full House Challenge:  25/25!
5. Library Challenge: I'm at 181.  Glad to see this one is still moving.
6. Diversity Challenge 2016: 12/12. 11/12. Poetry is the tricky one. In September I'm taking a closer look at the racial diversity in the books -- is it set in a multiracial society? It seems a read a variety here, from books with a single culture to books with a diverse cast.
7. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  41.  Time to make my shelves my BFF. I did buy a new book, but then I read it.
8. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 19/20.  Still need a Pulitzer.
9. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 12/12!
10. Surprise Me Challenge:  I keep almost reading Positively. I've picked out but not picked up the September book.
11. Flash Bingo: I still need need a book about books, and an Australian book.
12. Literary Exploration Challenge: 12/12. Now I'll work on the 36 challenge -- 33/36